Michael V. Wedin presents a new interpretation of Parmenides' Way of Truth: the most important philosophical treatise before the work of Plato and Aristotle. The Way of Truth contains the first extended philosophical argument in the western tradition--an argument which decrees that there can be no motion, change, growth, coming to be, or destruction; and indeed that there can be only one thing. These severe metaphysical theses are established by a series of deductions and these deductions in turn rest on an even more fundamental claim, namely, the claim that it is impossible that there be something that is not. This claim is itself established by a deduction that Wedin calls the Governing Deduction. Wedin offers a rigorous reconstruction of the Governing Deduction and shows how it is used in the arguments that establish Parmenides' severe metaphysical theses (what Wedin calls the Corollaries of the Governing Deduction). He also provides successful answers to most commentators who find Parmenides' arguments to be shot through with logical fallacies. Finally, Wedin turns to what is currently the fashionable reading of Parmenides, according to which he falls squarely in the tradition of the Ionian natural philosophers. He argues that the arguments for the Ionian Interpretation fail badly. Thus, we must simply determine where Parmenides' argument runs, and here there is no substitute for rigorous logical reconstruction. On this count, as our reconstructions make clear, the argument of the Way of Truth leads to a Parmenides who is indeed a severe arbiter of philosophical discourse and who brings to a precipitous halt the entire enterprise of natural explanation in the Ionian tradition.

About the Author
Michael V. Wedin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Mind and Imagination in Aristotle (Yale University Press, 1989), and Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta (OUP, 2000).

Reviews
Michael V. Wedin's stimulating monograph presents a call to arms in defence of Parmenides' status as both 'a severe arbiter of philosophical discourse' and a strict monist who stands apart from and, indeed, rejects the Ionian tradition of natural philosophythe book will be of value to anyone with a serious interest in Parmenides' poem, not least for the degree of disagreement it is likely to provoke. * Jenny Bryan, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online *
... we have no reservations whatsoever about recommending it to those who wish to join the fascinating and still unresolved struggle over what Parmenides really said. * Sosseh Assaturian and Matt Evans, Journal of the History of Philosophy *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198715474
Author Michael V. Wedin
Format Hardback
Page Count 286
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 163mm * 22mm